


always been and are

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Adultery, Brother/Brother Incest, Cuddling & Snuggling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sibling Incest, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21708826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Being in between.
Relationships: Atli/Presumable Canon Wife (Vinland Saga), Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous





	always been and are

**Author's Note:**

> precedes [other side of paradise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21575611) and fills out some things mentioned in [the two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443119) [nights fics ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21460645) (meaning sexual assault is hinted at very broadly). someday i'll find out if the series function works when posting anon. currently @ vincestsaga on twitter for further brocontent.
> 
> Additional warnings: one instance of unrepentant child on child violence.

It's not dark out, nor even close. But inside the house it might as well be. They're in Torgrim's bed. It's big enough for the both of them; Atli had it made even before he was married, when he was just noticing that his brother sprawled and kicked like a child now in his sleep. There was never any question of him not having a bed to himself. Atli knows what his own bones need at this age, and his brother's going to have a mattress just as soft.

"How's this?"

"Wonderful." Atli presses closer into his brother, pulling arms tight round his neck for a moment before settling down against his chest. "I missed this. Been jumping awake so many nights, you've no idea."

"I always told you I'd spoil you rotten if you kept making me do this. Body count as high as yours and you still need big brother to scare the monsters away." He's immensely pleased about it. There's no wife in the world who can handle monsters like a big brother can.

Atli doesn't mention Torgrim's nightmares, which wake him much louder. It's not safe to hug him while he doesn't know his own strength, so Atli holds his hand until the shaking stops. There's no chance of him keeping the dreams away in the first place. Older brothers are born, not made. All he can do is come over afterwards and be comforting until Torgrim forgets the dreams he doesn't have words to describe. "But we can't for much longer. If anyone..."

"I'll move you once you're out. Just get to sleep."

It's the most comfortable way to sleep for both of them. They've done it since Atli was old enough to sleep out of their parents' bed. He never missed that much, not with his brother there to whisper and laugh with like you can't do with grownups. And kick, sometimes, when you both get so warm under the blankets that everything pisses you off.

They learnt how to do a lot of things, huddled up together by nights. And there was no question between them about starting again, now that they're reunited. They can't exist near each other as separate beings for long. Atli knows that well enough. Maybe he should try to resist. But he won't. Instead he breathes Torgrim in, the way he couldn't for years, not without feeling guilty and dirty, and lets his brother be the warmest thing in the room, warmer than the fire behind him.

"Remember how crazy I always was for you," Torgrim says, as if he's thinking of their childhood too. "Even when you came crying to me with your knees all skinned. Every year I'd look around at every kid younger than me, and every year you were the cleverest, bravest one of them all. You could do anything you set your mind to."

"I was just playing at being you. All the kids must have done it at some point."

Torgrim laughs. It's nice to hear, especially pressed up close so it's feeling as well as sound. "They can't have been very good at it. You're the only one who stuck in my mind."

"They all liked you, you know. Even when we ganged up on them, it was only their parents who held it against you. I was so glad I got to be born in the same house so I could be your favorite." Atli reaches up for a lock of Torgrim's hair without needing to look. "Even if it caused trouble later."

"Best loot's always what you had to fight to keep."

"You've told me that so many times."

"Probably have. What haven't I said to you at this point?"

"There's one or two things you never would."

They still haven't said those particular things, not either of them. But the unsaid is with them now more than ever before. It's almost a physical presence in the house, just like the smoke that builds up inside with the door shut. The way they are isn't just by nights anymore. Not now they know how hungry you can get for something that was supposed to be _inseparable_.

The words still hurt too much coming out, so Torgrim clears his throat and says, "Best behaved kid in the village, too."

"Now that's a complete lie." They both keep going back to the past, to other stages of life when they were sure they knew everything they'd ever be to each other.

"What did I ever have to scold you about more than once? Except for rushing your work so we could go off and moon over each other for a few more hours."

"You never wasted too many words on that. There was that one poor boy, I don't even remember his name. I broke his arm over you once."

"Really?" Torgrim asks, genuinely startled. "I never saw you that jealous even over a woman."

"It wasn't like that. We were still just boys, me nine and you ten. It was brotherly jealousy. You told me to stop drumming on the fence when I was minding the sheep, and try acting more like what's-his-name. The next time I saw him sitting on his fence minding his sheep, I pushed him in."

"Bit of a cowardly method. You could've just said he'd pissed you off and I'd've helped in a fight."

"He was only seven, I couldn't ask for help with that. Anyway, I wasn't planning it. I'd just been stewing for a few days when I saw him. He did get charged pretty hard and I would've felt badly if he died, but all he lost was a finger or two." Atli looks up reproachfully. "I'm sure I've told you all this before."

"I've never heard this. You must be getting old."

"Not so old I wouldn't do it again. It felt like the whole village had gotten together and told me I was going to be kicked out so they could give you a new little brother. I was half convinced they would."

"Kid in our village who lost his fingers?" Torgrim's still thinking. He shakes his head. "I told you, I hardly remember anybody who wasn't you. A few of the boys who came sailing with us later, I'd know them if I saw them again at that age, but I suppose he wouldn't have come."

"I don't know what happened to him." Atli doesn't want to get on the subject of the boys who came sailing. "It's not that important, anyway."

"And her?"

"What about her?"

"What were you and she up to that I never heard about? Setting up your little emergency plan?"

Atli sighs. "I told you, she's younger. She was so small when we left I never even noticed her."

"If you say so."

"The only thing I knew about her when we came home was her house was the one with that cow I used to think could see us from behind. You know, with the eye-spots on its rump." He sighs again, ruefully. "You must have told me a hundred times to stop being so stupid."

"Oh, I thought it could too. I just wanted you to stop saying it out loud. Made it more real."

"Well," Atli says, after a moment's reflection, "either way, it must have been eaten long ago."

"Nice family, always helping us out of trouble like that."

"Stop." He puts a hand on Torgrim's cheek. He wants this to be easy, just for a short time, before things have to be hard again.

His brother brushes the hand off with a soft noise of discontent, but he does go quiet, and for a few minutes Atli nearly falls asleep, nestled in a warmth his marriage bed has never been able to match. What keeps him awake is knowing how long he'll have to wait for this again, once he lets go.  
  
"You're sure you're eating enough?" Torgrim runs a hand along his frame. "There's so _little_ of you."

"And so much of you." Atli rubs his brother's belly with a happy sigh. "I'm getting all I want. You're taking good care of me."

He wonders vaguely if he would have cut things off, if his brother had just tried to do everything again right away. But Torgrim would barely touch him those first days, except for feeding him and washing him. Dressing him in the mornings, practically, as if the years of stifled big-brothering had fermented right into mothering. It's only now the bruises are faded that his brother's willing to take him again. And of course the weeks left Atli a shaky, desperate mess just waiting to be taken. 

Not that he minds. He's always been that, for his big brother.

"Let me look at the fire."

"If you insist."

He could turn over himself, but Torgrim takes him by the arms and rolls him over to face the fire. He's always been able to do that and they both like it.

"You've always been so scrawny." They're thinking the same thing again.

"It's not a fair trade, is it? You hardly get anything back from me." Atli moves back into the warm softness of his brother's body, letting himself be folded up.

"Just means I can never get sick of you."

It's nice, being the comforted one again. Even when they're only teasing. He's only ever imitating his brother when he calms down one of the children, or Torgrim himself. 

"Brother."

"Mm?" Torgrim's tracing something on his hip. Both of them fully clothed, so Atli can't tell what the shape is, but it's a habit born of long years.

"I wasn't... a burden on you when we were young, was I?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?" His brother shakes him, half playful, half really annoyed.

"You were so responsible." And you're not, when you're in that mood now, he doesn't add. One of the worst things about the last few years is how little Torgrim acts the way he really was at that age. And how he's never mentioned knowing any Atli but the old man who promised to take care of him from now on, pulling him through the red snow in the wake of Thorkell's army.

"Of course I was. Isn't every child, who doesn't want to get thrown to the wolves?"

"But you always had me following you around. Even when I was too young to do what you were. You don't think you would've had more... fun, if I—"

"Fun!" Torgrim bites his ear. "You really are getting old, if you think being a kid is fun. Can't leave home, can't pick the work you do. Something new you've got to learn every day. The fun doesn't start until you're grown enough to get away!"

"It wasn't a special bother, taking care of me all the time?"

"A bother like the fucking sun being too bright in the sky, that's what you were. What, are you fishing for compliments? I haven't told you enough how much I worshipped you?"

"I didn't think being a kid was so bad," Atli says. "Not that I'd ever go back, but I had some fun. You really hated it that much?"

"I must've been four or five," Torgrim says, thoughtfully. "That's when you could finally do enough work to start following me around. That was the most _fun_ being a kid ever was. Didn't have to do things alone anymore. Oh, now what?"

Atli's turned back around and hugging him. "You're the perfect big brother." He doesn't care if no one else in the world would ever say so, because he knows it to be true, and isn't he the one who's chosen this, needed this, each and every time? "You don't even know how perfect." He kisses him on the cheek. He's letting Torgrim be the one to give the other kind, now that he's willing to do it.

"Now you're getting senile," is all Torgrim will say. "I can't make head nor tail of you." But he does kiss back, on the mouth where neither of them is completely used to the sensation. "Should've done this back when you had less mustache," he adds.

"You're asking me to shave, then, just so you can rub _yours_ all over my hairless face?"

"Of course not. Just wish I'd had more practice." Another kiss, on Atli's nose this time. "Besides, maybe I'd be the one shaving."

"Oh, no," Atli says, alarmed. "You can't stand that." Torgrim looks at him in the dim light and he wishes he'd never mentioned shaving. "You can't bear having the shears near your face when you're... the way you've been." He doesn't mention how his brother always cries a little when his hair has to be cut, and his wife's always the one to do it. He touches Torgrim's shoulder. "Remember, the day I came back and you couldn't...? Don't try, please."

"Oh?" Torgrim says. "Anyway, I never said I hated being a kid. Weren't we together all the time? That was enough."

Atli's not sure how much his brother will ever be able to hear about those other times. He slips gratefully back into the previous thread of conversation. "It was. Never mind me. I am getting old."

"It's just it only got better after that. So much we couldn't do, stuck in this little house. Real fights. All that shiny shit I got my hands on over the years." He sighs longingly, then squeezes Atli tighter. "That was life as it ought to be lived. And fucking till you screamed, remember that? You were always so shy back here, even out in the woods."

"Just careful." Atli pushes the worry down with an effort. "You never let up telling me to be careful."

"Maybe you were a little too good at listening to your elders." He re-settles himself in the bed, using the arm under Atli's neck to pull him in closer. "A quick study, that's what you were. And good-looking. Some days I was scared you'd end up taller than I would."  
  
"Why d'you keep working your way back to that age?" Atli laughs. "I might have to start getting jealous."

Torgrim gives his mustache a tug. "You get handsomer every year. I'm just thinking about all the different places we started out. But if you want to stick to when we were really _kids_..." His beard tickles Atli's collarbone, creeping down under the collar of his shirt. "Show me where it hurts."

Atli curls wordlessly into him, breathing ragged and his smaller body starting to tremble.

"Come on. If you can't I might have to kiss you everywhere."

"You just want the excuse. There's nothing wrong."

"For fuck's sake, Atli, " Torgrim growls. He traces the ridge of Atli's brow, only recently back to its normal color. "The bruises are barely healed! I can't stand seeing you hurt. Why are you so bent on keeping quiet about it?"

"It's nothing. Nothing we haven't seen happen a hundred times over. Or done ourselves."

"But not to you. If you'd just give me some names--"

"It's not worth it."

"How can it not be worth it? It's your honor we're talking about here."

It's not often Atli snaps at his brother, but he does now. "You know how careful we're all being about--whatever it is makes those times come on! And you want to go running off to do exactly what got you--" With a struggle, he collects himself, only because he still doesn't know the right word to use. "It might be worse the second time. That's all I'm saying."

"And these?" Torgrim's fingers brush the scarring on Atli's neck where the rope abrasions were never cleaned. For all he's home now, and for all the touch is a familiar one that's been there a hundred times before, Atli nearly jumps back at the jolt that goes through him. "You think I'm so far gone I'll mistake this for a normal fight? We make sure no one ever messes with one of us and gets the chance to try it again. Haven't I always kept you safe before?"

"That's over now. All of it. I'm the one taking care of you. If you ever fight again, it'll be because I'm dead."

"What's so _different_ this time?" Torgrim holds his shoulder tight for a second, squeezing it in his frustration.  
They'll never think the same about this. Even if Torgrim remembers everything, even if he could, it would never teach him the same lesson.

"The world lets you get by sometimes, if you grovel. I'm too old now to do anything else. Too tired." Atli turns his face to the fire again, and for a few long moments there's nothing at his back but the empty cold of the Jomsviking's tent. He waits to be swallowed up, woken from this dream too.

Then his brother moves forward to meet him, belly to spine as they've always been, arms wrapping around to anchor him here in reality. "Get some sleep. You'll feel better once you do. Don't take too long about it, my arm's going numb."

Atli's heard of men who go into ecstasies over the thighs and breasts and bellies of their wives, and those are decent enough things, he supposes. But for the life of him he's never understood why there aren't any poems written about the perfect happiness of being wrapped up safe in your older brother's arms.


End file.
